ALBUM REVIEW: Impact Is Imminent – Anvil

For band who never quite attained the fame of their many successors, ANVIL hardly need an introduction. The band’s founding members, singer and guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Rob Reiner (accompanied by various others), have delivered albums upon albums of solid heavy metal at a consistent pelt since the early 80s. Throughout, ANVIL have defiantly stayed the course, ignoring trends not just in mainstream music but within the metal sub-genre itself. Similar to a band like SAXON, an ANVIL release is a stylistic time capsule to a certain era of heavy metal – just with increasingly sleek production values. Their latest, Impact Is Imminent, is no different, treading the same ANVIL-flattened path the band have always done – a mix of NWOBHM influences and the progenitor elements of thrash and speed.

True to its name, the album gets off to an impactful start. The menacing stomp of opener Take A Lesson sees Kudlow chronicle the highs and lows of his career, painting ANVIL’s story as a cautionary tale of the music business. The band’s playing is tight and urgent, with the marching power chords providing the thundering foundation for Kudlow’s sneering lyrics before everything erupts with an obligatorily furious guitar solo. While on the album’s heavier side, it sets the tone perfectly.

Throughout Impact Is Imminent, ANVIL veer between two sides of a heavy metal generational change, the flipping point between the decades of the 70s and 80s. On the older side, you have cuts like Fire Rain. With its swaggering riff and simple, hooky chorus, it almost sounds like an off-cut of JUDAS PRIEST’s Killing Machine or British Steel. Elsewhere, channelling the more mid-70s rock sound is (the ironically titled) Don’t Look Back – a track with shades of KISS and BLUE ÖYSTER CULT as if performed by METALLICA. In contrast, elsewhere ANVIL lean heavily in to the metal sound that they helped pioneer (or at least prototype). Someone To Hate sounds like early OVERKILL with the BPM turned down, its lightning-fast guitar leads countered by punkish guitar riffs and call-and-response gang shouts.

When they’ve got a bit more fire in their belly, ANVIL are at their best, and the venom of Someone To Hate is an album highlight. Similarly, the blues metal strut of Another Gun Fight allows Kudlow to get his best snarls out to the beat of a hellish shuffle. Speaking of shuffles, it would be remiss not to mention Impact’s duology of instrumentals, Teabag and Gomez. Ostensibly two variations of the same track, the tracks are over the top thrashy blues jams where the ANVIL lads let off a little steam. While a bit redundant to have two versions of the same track in the album proper, Gomez’s big band horn section is nothing short of good fun.

While broadly enjoyable, there are a few moments where Impact Is Imminent falls flat however. One of ANVIL’s more divisive elements has always been the vocals. While certainly distinctive and full of character, Kudlow’s voice often strains as soon as it attempts a melody with more than a few notes, such as on Ghost Shadow. While at this point Kudlow’s voice is one of ANVIL’s idiosyncrasies, it’s hard not to imagine how a stronger voice would handle these tracks. Additionally, those with even a limited knowledge of ANVIL will be aware they often stray the line between parody and sincerity (and often so with a knowing wink), but Impact has a few SPINAL TAP clangers in its midst. The biggest culprit is Lockdown, a song that veers into the unintentionally hilarious thanks to its extremely on-the-nose references to the pandemic. Rhyming “quarantine”, “COVID-19” and “vaccine” truly strays a fine line between genius and ridicule.

Through every track on Impact Is Imminent, it’s abundantly clear that ANVIL are only creating music for themselves and for the staunch ANVIL loyalists. They are not here to win over new fans or to experiment with and push the confines of the genre; they’re simply here to add another solid slab of metal to their increasingly vast collection. The single-mindedness is certainly commendable, but it also means you know exactly what you’re getting out of Impact Is Imminent before you go in. True to form, don’t expect any surprises from ANVIL – just ol’ reliable heavy metal.

Rating: 6/10

Impact Is Imminent is set for release on May 20th via AFM Records.

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